Donagh Mc Sweeney

LinkedIn is by far one of the most popular and successful social networking websites on the internet. A popular network with business professionals, it launched in 2003 and just last months it reached a milestone 50million membership.

Along with success comes a responsibility to its users to provide an exciting and beneficial service that enables people to network with others efficiently. Today came the announcement by Principal User Experience Designer, Kevin Bury that LinkedIn is currently in the process of redesigning certain aspects of the website.

According to Kevin Bury there will be four main goals/areas of the redesign.

1. A global navigation bar at the top of the page that provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services.
2. Simplified local navigation within each of the LinkedIn areas (Profile, Contacts, Groups, etc.).
3. More room available for page content. Less scrolling.
4. A cleaner, less-cluttered look.

The most dramatic change is the doing away of the sidebar, with LinkedIn deciding that top navigation is the way to go. Why they feel it’s necessary to change is anyones guess!

There is also a slight change to the profile page, although not that dramatic (bar the already mentioned sidebar of course).

What do you think of the new designs?

I’ve been noticing a lot of new words and phrases growing in popularity on social networks over the last few weeks. This seems to be extremely common on Twitter with people basically sticking “Tw” before any word to form their own. Twoto, twestival, Twebinar, it’s never ending!

Well here’s a list of some of the more common words that you’re going to come across on the new “Web 2.0″ internet.

API – An API (Application Programming interface) is an interface provided by developers/websites which allows others to tap into and interact with their services. If you’re not a developer then don’t worry about it!

App – An app (application or webapp) is a piece of software that adds functionality to a service. Apps are popular on social networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook while Apples App Store allows users to download apps to their iPhones.

Blog – A blog is basically a website! Blogs are usually personal websites where people express their views. Corporate blogs have become popular in recent times as organizations take to the web. People can view a blog and leave comments. If your blog is popular a lot of interaction will likely happen between people on your blog.

Blogesphere – The blogesphere is a term that refers to every blog on the internet as a whole.

Blogroll – A blogroll refers to the links that people put on their blogs, linking to other blogs.

DM – DM is a term coined by Twitter. It’s an abbreviation of the word ‘Direct Message”. If you want to send someone a private message then you send them a DM. E.g. DM @loopthing Looking forward to launching Loopthing.

Embed – When you take a video from a site such as YouTube and put it on your own website it’s called embedding.

Failwhale – When something goes wrong on Twitter users are greeted by an image of a great giant whale. Since its launch Twitter users have unfortunately being seeing all too many failures, hence the term Failwhale is used by users to refer to when things go wrong. The Failwhale has become somewhat part and part of Twitter.

Follower(s) – Another term born as a result of Twitter. When you want to link to someone on Twitter you are said to become one of their followers.

Hashtag – On Twitter specific topics can be identified using specific words that are preceded by the # symbol. You would use such a hashtag when engaging in a conversation with many people in order to allow everyone to follow the conversation.

Mashup – A mashup is basically the bringing together of a number of webpage or applications to form one.

Meme – A meme is a term used to refer to something that has gone ‘viral’ on the internet. It’s usually a catchphrase, topic or concept. A recent example of a meme is the Balloon Boy.

Microblogging – This is what Twitter is all about. Unlike blogs which can posts of limitless size, microblogs are limited to a specific amount of characters per post. Twitter is a microblog that allows 140 characters per post.

ReTweet (RT) – On Twitter you can take a ‘tweet’ that someone is after ‘tweeting’ and post it yourself. It is common courtesy to give acknowledgement to the original person that posted the message.  E.g. RT @DonaghMc Loopthing is a social network that allows business to grow their online presence.

There is no limit to the amount of ReTweets that can occur for the original post. In recent month, ‘Via’ has emerged as an alternative to the RT abbreviation.

SEO­ – I debated whether to include the next two, but here goes anyway. SEO is a term used mainly by web developers. It’s short for Search Engine optimization, which is the process of developing a website in a manner that search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing will like. The aim of SEO is to make a website rise in ranking on a ‘SERP’.

SERP – Refers to a Search Engine Results Page, which is the page you see in Google, Yahoo or Bing when you search for a specific keyword(s).

Social bookmarking – Social bookmarking sites allow you to save bookmarks online, rather than in your browser. You can also recommend bookmarks to others and social bookmarking icons are found on most ‘Web 2.0’ websites today. Digg, Del.icio.us and StumleUpon are examples.  

Tag – A tag is a word used to describe a blog post, profile, media file, etc. They help to create an association between certain items.

Tag Cloud – A tag cloud is a gathering of ‘Tags’ in one area. Usually tag clouds display tags in different sizes, with the tag that is most popular appearing the largest size and the least popular the smallest size.

Trackback – A trackback is feature found on blogs. When a ‘blogger’ writes a post they may choose to send a trackback to another website/blog that was used as inspiration or for research on the post. The person on the other website/blog will receive the trackback and then decide if they wish to make it public or not.

Trending – Trending refers to hashtags/topics on Twitter that are the most popular at a certain time. The top 10 trending (popular) topics appear at the bottom right of a person’s Twitter page.

Tweep(s) – A tweep is yet another Twitter word. It refers to a person with a mutual following.

Tweet – A tweet is a post/message on Twitter.

Twitterati – Refers to celebrities on Twitter.

Twitosphere – Is a word used to refer to people on Twitter. Similar to ‘Blogesphere’.

Viral – When an item such as a video, image, catchphrase, event, etc takes over the internet and becomes gigantically popular is it said to go viral!

Web 2.0 – Is a term that refers to the new wave of development on the internet. Web 2.0 sites are said to be more dynamic, organized and stylish compared to the old.

Webinar - A webinar is meeting or conference that takes place over the internet. It’s usually organized with plenty of notice and is usually a one-way interaction. Like real life, some are free while others may charge.

Widget – A widget is a piece of code that you can take from one website and display on your own. They can be personalized to your own liking to an extent. Widgets usually display some changing information of some sort. MyBlogLog’s Recent Readers widget is one of the most popular out there.

Wiki – A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number o web pages.

Wordpress – Wordpress is a popular blogging platform. It’s allows bloggers to establish a website quickly with relatively ease using a number of templates and widgets.  This blog is using wordpress!

There’s many more out there so feel free to contribute!

Last night the web was captivated by a breaking story from Colorado. The story goes that apparently a 6-year-old boy had floated off in a homemade helium balloon and was flying uncontrollably across the American skies.

As you can imagine, panic ensued! All sorts of emergency services were mobilized, Denver airport was closed and even the army sent a UH-58 Kiowa helicopter and the mighty Black Hawk to assist! Live pictures were streamed across the American airwaves with most of the major networks following the story and the world was captivated.

With the instantaneous nature of Twitter millions jumped on the story with people expressing their shock while hoping for happy ending! Balloon Boy enveloped Twitter and much of the social web within an hour or so! And in what must be a Twitter first, the story was trending on Twitter under 8 separate tags such as Balloon Boy, #ballonboy and Colorado! Everywhere I went it was the same thing, the same story! It was quiet amazing to see.

After a 50 mile race through the skies the inevitable happened, Balloon Boy crashed. Tweet Tears were shed and shock set it! Was Balloon Boy dead? Injured? Traumatized? Well actually, none of the above! In fact Balloon Boy was actually never Balloon Boy at all! In fact he was actually at home, 50 miles away hiding his attic after receiving a scolding from his father! Mother f**cker!

The boy’s father, Richard Heene, said the family was tinkering with the balloon Thursday and that he scolded Falcon (Balloon Boy) for getting inside a compartment on the craft. He said Falcon’s brother had seen him inside the compartment before it took off and that’s why they thought he was in there when it launched.

It didn’t take long for a tone of viral videos, jokes and even T-Shirts to hit the web. You can now buy your own Balloon Boy T-shirt on Zazzle if you’re interested! Of the lot, CollegeHumour have one of the best videos out there on 50 mile chase across the skies!

[collegehumor 1923183 425 380] httpv://www.collegehumor.com/video:1923183 -> [collegehumor 1923183]

Today rumours have started to circle the web that the whole thing was one big hoax! And there might be some truth to the rumours with an interview on CNN raising all sorts of questions. Asked why he didn’t respond to his family calling his name, Falcon says, “you guys [his parents] said we did this for the show.” His parents, seemingly stunned by the answer, quickly try to change the story. Watch it for yourself!

Anyone on Twitter for the last few hours will probably have noticed that the sites timeline functionality that allows you to see what everyone is tweeting  about is down!

The problem only seems to affect the actual “Home” page. All @ messages do arrive but the problem is also spreading to third party apps like TweetDeck! So the question remains, “what the hell is going on now?”

There’s nothing on the Twitter blog as yet to suggest what the answer is! Social media chaos predicted!

Update : An update from Twitter posted at 1:50 Eastern time said the company was “deploying fixes to solve the problem.” And as of now all is hunky doory again!

How do you turn tweets into cash? That’s the question that’s been bugging the team over on Twitter for the last few months! Well now it looks like they’ve come up with one answer, namely you and me!

Rumors are abound that Twitter is an advanced talks with both Microsoft and Google in relations to two separate deals! According to All Things D, the two Internet giants are close to securing licensing that would allow them full access to all of our data on Twitter.

What do Google and Microsoft want with my tweets?

Well simply put, Data Mining! Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from data and with 54million daily users on Twitter the volume of information available is enormous. Both companies can see the vast potential of having access this information. According to the source, both companies would use the data and integrate them into their search engines, something that would certainly boost both!

All Things D reports the deal will be non-exclusive and will likely contain a number of structures, including a payment of several million dollars to Twitter. You can also expect Twitter to get a piece of the SERPS pie!

With both Twitter’s business plan and website design going through a slow evolution as we speak, it’s not so shocking that such deals are in the works. Like all websites Twitter’s strength has, and still is, you and me. However, doesn’t such a deal make you feel like a pawn being used to serve the king!

Social networking has become part and part of most of our lives over the last few years. What started off as a slight infatuation with the online world has become somewhat of an obsession for many. It’s not simply a “phase” people are  going through which will end sometime soon. It’s a ongoing trend affecting everyone these days and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by business leaders.

A new study by Robert Half Technology has found that many businesses are actively creating work policies in relation to the growing presence of online networking in their employees lives, yet the majority aren’t reacting positively!

The study, which was based on telephone interviews with more than 1,400 CEO’s across the US, has revealed that just over half of those asked have policies that completely ban their workforce from accessing sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Loopthing.

• Prohibited completely   -   54%
• Permitted for business purposes only   -   19%
• Permitted for limited personal use   -   16%
• Permitted for any type of personal use   -   10%
• Don’t know/no answer   -   1%

The reasons cited by those on the majority side indicate that most tend to see social networks as a distraction, something that diverts their employees attention away from more pressing and important matters.

The study also reveals that nearly 1/5 of businesses believe that social networking can be a positive thing, but only for work purposes.

It’s not hard to see what the majority of organisations are not allowing employees engage online. Social networking sites are pretty secure on the technical side of things, but  it’s the people who use them that are a cause for concern within an organisation. Productivity, viruses, phishing, bandwidth usage, the disclosure of private information and brand damage are just some of the points that a company would think about when choosing to either allow access or implement a social media ban.

Software such as WebSense can be used to monitor web activity, so remember the next time you’re dying to update you’re online status, check first whether you’re company allows you to do so or you could end up in hot water. Or just use your iPhone!

Wordpress plug-ins are new territory for me. Yesterday one went awry and the blog was down for a few hours. Whoops! It’s a learning process I guess!

There are thousands of plug-ins out there that allow you to customise your blog to your hearts content. They are by far one of the main reasons why Wordpress has become the major powerhouse in blogging circles!

Today I came across an attractive plug-in that allows you add some stylish social icons to your blog. It’s called Sexybookmarks. Every blogger wants to be able to share their posts with the web at large, and this is just the way to do it!

The installation through the Wordpress Admin page is extremely simple. There’s a whole load of social icons you can choose to add to your posts and/or pages such as Twitter, Del.ic.ios, Facebook, Mixx, Newsvine, Digg, etc. It is also extremely simple to understand and customise. You can also choose from a number of different background images that ask the reader to share the post.

One small criticism I would have is that if you’re using the Twitter icon you’ll need to install a second plug-in called ‘Twitter Friendly Links“.Why? By right this should all be contained within the one plug-in.

You’ve only got a tiny window of opportunity from the time someone finishes reading your post until the time they leave. If you want to expand your reach across the web then you need to make possible for your blog posts to be made shareable. It’s also important that you make this an easy and fast process. Plug-ins like Sexybookmarks are just the way to do it!